If the Chinese attempt on the land revenues of the Railway is bond fide, what is the position of all land owners in" the treaty ports in the event of extraterritorial rights being surrendered Are they too, to be faced with the grave danger of having that which they have paid for, filched from them on some equally frivolous pretext? If they are in that danger it requires. no great amount of explanation to show exactly what land is likely to be worth as the time draws near for the consummation of Chinese hopes in this direction. The prospect of foreigners being laid defenceless by the surrender of rights they now have, cannot be viewed with any degree of complacency.
But there is more than enough to show that the whole contention of the Chinese responsible for this attempt on the railway is not bond fide and that the Chinese know it. It is to be found in the method of procedure. If the Chinese are entitled to recover the whole of the Railway by reason of the present state of affairs in Russia, they are entitled to the whole of it in one swoop; the very fact that they are endeavouring to obtain the railway piecemeal cannot but be regarded as a series of ballans d'essai preparatory to the main proposition that the railway itself should pass into Chinese control. If the Chinese think they are entitled to if, their obvious duty and the best test of their motives would be the out and out demand that the railway should be surrendered to them, instead of which it would seem that they are engaged on a campaign the ultimate feature of which would be the surrender of the remaining portion of the Railway undertaking, a portion which deprived of its various accessories would be practically incapable of continuance as a separate entity. rom a moral point of view it would be preferable that the Chinese make their. seizure in one fell swoop; from the point of view of the administration of the railway it also has advantages, for it would seem almost impossible that the railway itself should be under one authority and its land under another. It is quite impossible that one should -have control of the rolling stock and the other the land on which it is to operate.
A mouse has been purchased at the Peak for the Chaplain of St. John's Cathedral, Hongkong. The cost is $30,000, which sum was recently given by a member of the congregation for the purpose.
Tre Eastern Telegraph Ca., says an exchange, was to introduce on September 1 a system of plain language cable letter telegrams acceptable for transmission on any day of the week (except Sunday), with normal delivery after 48 hours, at one-quarter of the ordinary rate of charge, subject to a minimum charge for 20 words. These messages will be prefixed C. L. T. chargeable as one word and will, generally, be subject to the same rules as deferred telegrams. Arrangements have been made for the service to commence between Great Britain and Australia and New Zealand on the above-mentioned date, and it was hoped to extend the arrangement, also from the same date, to South Africa, India, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, and Federated Malay States. These special telegrams will replace the former week-end telegrams which were in operation before the war over the company's lines, and which it is not proposed to resuscitate.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.